February 3, 2004
Wilkins
to Speak at Pope & John Lecture
CHICAGO ---
David B. Wilkins, the Kirkland & Ellis Professor
of Law and director of the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard
Law School, will talk about black Chicago lawyers and the social
structure of the black corporate bar at this year’s Pope & John
Lecture on Professionalism at Northwestern University School of
Law.
Free and open to the public, the lecture will take place at noon
Thursday, Feb. 5, at the School of Law, 357 E. Chicago Ave.
Wilkins also is a visiting senior research fellow of the American
Bar Foundation and a faculty associate of the Harvard University
Center for Ethics and the Professions.
He has written
extensively on the legal profession, with an emphasis on the
experiences of black lawyers in corporate law firms. He
is co-author (along with Harvard Law School colleague Andrew Kaufman)
of “Problems in Professional Responsibility for a Changing
Profession,” Carolina Academic Press (4th ed. 2002), as well
as numerous articles on legal ethics, law firms and the legal profession.
His upcoming
scholarship on black lawyers includes: “The
Black Bar: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and the Future
of Race and the American Legal Profession” (Oxford University
Press); “From ‘Separate is Inherently Unequal’ to ‘Diversity
is Good for Business’: Consumerism, Competition and Conscience
in the Careers of Black Corporate Lawyers” (Harvard Law Review);
and “Doing Well by Doing Good? The Role of Public Service
in the Careers of Black Corporate Lawyers” (University of
Houston Law Review).
Wilkins also
is working on a project titled “After the
JD, a Nationwide Longitudinal Study of Lawyers’ Careers” and
an investigation into how corporations purchase legal services.
Prior to joining
Harvard’s faculty, Wilkins was an associate
at the law firm of Nussbaum Owen & Webster in Washington, D.C.;
and before that, he served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall
of the Supreme Court and Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the United States
Court of Appeals. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard
Law School.
In 1991 the
Chicago firm of Pope & John Ltd. established
the Pope & John Lecture Series on Professionalism at Northwestern
University School of Law. Each year the lecture focuses on the
many dimensions of a lawyer's professional responsibility, including
legal ethics, public service, professional civility, pro bono representation
and standards of conduct. Directed by Professor Steven Lubet, the
series is part of the Law School's Program on Advocacy. |